and if you read about them, you realize that.

you realize major advertisers have stopped doing that right? They have even come out and said it's not worth the money.
But hey, one day you'll get it when you're not so salty

Wtf is this comment section. Not what I expected. So freaking random and has gotten so off topic 😂

This is just made up. Cutter nor his reps came out and said anything as to the reason why he no longer wanted to be a Flyer. Briere was the only one that spoke publicly about it and said he had a contract ready for him. Until the other sides claims something different we're left assuming based off 1 sides comments.

I believe I was very specific when I said "he told the org he wasn't signing" as in he told the Flyers, not the public, which was a kindness he didn't owe the org to keep it quiet and keep his trade value high.

It was specifically when you claimed the reason he wasn't going to sign was "over mishandling him," that I was disputing. His side has not come out and actually claimed that. And yes of course he kept it quiet. You think he wanted to go back to college for 2 more years? No way.

The difference between a beer league and a professional league is the beer league gets its revenue from the players, who pay the league for the chance to play. A professional league gets it from fans, and uses it to pay players whom they believe the fans will want to pay the team to see.

The NHL was never a beer league. You could say that until the 1967 expansion it was a regional league concentrated in eastern Canada and the northeastern US, but by then it already had most of the best hockey players in the world, though there were a few exceptions. We didn’t know how good the top players in the USSR were until they played a team of NHL all-stars in 1972, or how good Swedish hockey was until Borje Salming came to the NHL in 1973, but the NHL was the world’s top hockey league. I was told by the son of a 1930s NHL player that at that time, many of the world’s top players played in Canada’s senior amateur leagues – teams like the Whitby Dunlops and Trail Smoke Eaters – that competed for the Allan Cup, because in those leagues it was easier to balance hockey with a full-time day job that would earn them more money, but by the 1960s, NHL salaries had risen to the point of being able to entice most of the best players to play there.

I think the main reason there’s more money in the game today (relatively speaking) than in the 1960s is a combination of cultural and economic factors. The population was significantly lower than it is today, and those people didn’t have as much disposable income to spend on entertainment as they do now. This is true of all forms of entertainment – they weren’t the big businesses they are now. Owners had more leverage over the players, and they didn’t seem to value them as much, feeling that they could easily be replaced. The NHL players union had a corrupt leader (Alan Eagleson) who was in cahoots with the team owners, which wasn’t known until some years later, but this also helped to hold down salaries.

Anyway, I didn’t quite get the connection between the NHL being a beer league in 1963 and teams today not caring about their fans, but my point is you can’t assume that the relatively low player salaries at that time means that it wasn’t a major professional league. Those low salaries were just a sign of the times.

I don’t know why he refused to sign in Philadelphia, but regardless of the reason, spending such a high draft pick on a guy only to have him refuse to sign has to hurt, even if Drysdale becomes a cornerstone of their defense. You could say Gauthier showed some respect for the team by not going public with whatever his issue was, but that doesn’t change the fact that he refused to play for them. Assuming he makes the team in Anaheim – there are no guarantees even for a 5th overall pick – I expect Flyers fans to boo him every time he steps on the ice in Philadelphia, and I would not fault them at all for that.

Fans of other teams will probably forget about it though, unless one day he says he wants out of Anaheim.

they use to get drunk before and after games.....it was a beer league.

As for why there is money in it now... HDTV..... if there was no HDTV there would still be no real money in the NHL. That simple.
Believe me they weren't competitive in the 80s when other sports took off because the TVs sucked and it was hard to watch.